Sunday 4 December 2011 16.31 EST
First published on Sunday 4 December 2011 16.31 EST

In some ways, 2011 was the strangest year in living memory for British cinema. The UK Film Council was officially wound up at the end of March, a showy act from this coalition government, annulling a Labour creation on the grounds of high salaries and cronyism, but transferring much of its budget and responsibilities to the British Film Institute. And this at a time when the Film Council was having a golden age: a bag of Oscars for The King's Speech and a feeling that it had fostered real talent. Something was going very right for British cinema. Lynne Ramsey's We Need to Talk About Kevin premiered at Cannes; Steve McQueen's Shame and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights made waves at Venice.

Two film-makers from Iran showed that cinema was able to address the question of the Arab spring: Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi, directors and pro-democracy campaigners, have been given prison sentences for alleged crimes against national security. Showing enormous courage, they made films in 2011 that were critical of Iran. Panahi's This Is Not a Film and Rasoulof's Good Bye were shown at Cannes. I was on the Un Certain Regard jury that gave Rasoulof the directing prize.

Film-makers showed that 3D was not simply the fad that many had feared, with three directors making movies that grappled with its possibilities. Wim Wenders' Pina, about choreographer Pina Bausch, captured the physicality of dance; Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams intensified the mysteries of cave paintings; and Martin Scorsese's Hugo applied 3D to a family fantasy adventure.

An established talent and a relative newcomer gave us two of the year's best films. Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life was a bold and visionary work on an unfashionable Christian-humanist theme; while Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist was, released later this month, a glorious and loving pastiche of the Hollywood silent age.

Best breakthrough:Tom Hiddleston, for working with Branagh, Allen and Spielberg in quick succession.